I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and, amongst other things, to flexible communication schemes for wireless communications systems.
II. Background
Over the last several years, wireless communications technologies have evolved from analog-driven systems (which are expensive to maintain and operate) to digital (packet-switched) systems. In conventional analog systems, analog signals are relayed on a forward link and a reverse link and typically require a significant amount of bandwidth to enable signals to be transmitted and received while being associated with suitable quality. As the analog signals are continuous in time and space, no status messages (e.g., messages indicating receipt or non-receipt of data) need to be generated. In contrast, packet-switched systems allow analog signals to be converted to data packets and transmitted by way of a physical channel between an access terminal and a base station, router, etc. Additionally, digital data can be relayed in its natural form (e.g., text. Internet data, . . . ) through utilization of a packet switched network.
When data is relayed in packets over an over-the-air (OTA) connection, however, some packets may be lost. Pursuant to an example, data packets created by an access terminal (e.g., mobile telephone) can include a header, and information within such header can indicate a sequence number of a data packet. A module within a network can arrange the data packets according to information within the packet header and determine whether a suitable number of packets (out of all possibly received packets) have been received. Pursuant to an example, ACKs and/or NAKs can be created and provided to access terminal over a forward link. The converse also holds true; the access terminal can create receiver status messages (e.g., ACKs and/or NAKs) with respect to data received over a forward link.
In particular network architectures, however, generation of receiver status messages on the network side is a non-trivial task. For instance, an example network architecture can include transceiver modules that provide an air interface attachment to an access terminal. The transceiver modules can be communicatively coupled to a network module, which can provide an Internet attachment point for the access terminal. In such an architecture, conventionally the network module is charged with creating receiver status messages for data received from the access terminal. In more detail, the access terminal can provide data over a reverse link to a transceiver module, which in turn forwards such data to the network module. The network module analyzes the data packets and generates receiver status messages based at least in part upon the analysis. The receiver status messages are transmitted to a transceiver module that is servicing the access terminal, and such messages are then transmitted to the access terminal. The generation of receiver status messages by the network module (in a tiered network architecture) is problematic in that a significant amount of time is required between the access terminal transmitting data and the receipt of receiver status messages at the access terminal with respect to the transmitted data.